Despite this, I’m not of the opinion Nintendo should throw in its lot with Apple and other third parties, effectively becoming another Sega—yet. This is because Nintendo still has the potential to out-Apple Apple in the gaming space, through making games and hardware. This, note, is what Apple proponents rightly say sets Apple apart from much of the competition—it makes devices and operating systems, and so can mesh those things together far better than other companies. But Apple doesn’t do this in gaming.

What Apple does do in gaming, however, is provide a number of lessons that I still believe Nintendo must learn from:

More of an emphasis on digital downloads, with the immediacy and better value those things can provide.

A better way of dealing with indies—perhaps not quite a iOS-style free-for-all, but there must be a happy medium where bedroom coders are encouraged to bring further innovation to the platform.

More linkage with the wider world, through the use of non-gaming apps. Again, Nintendo shouldn’t follow Apple in this regard—a Nintendo device doesn’t need a half-million apps. But it does need to keep the device in someone’s hands, so they don’t stray. So: stronger social, browsing and video apps are a must, for a start.

The main focus of a Nintendo device must remain games, but that shouldn’t be the only focus, otherwise Nintendo runs the risk of its devices becoming increasingly niche, which in itself is a danger in that such things will appeal to people with very specific demands. The success of Nintendo handhelds has often hinged on their accessible and widespread nature, not them only finding favour with the select few.

The Kotaku interview is interesting in that instead of being bullish—Nintendo’s tactic of the past—Iwata is seemingly very aware of the changes in the market and yet has a belief Nintendo can continue to succeed. Again, there’s evidence here from Apple’s history—when the products are good enough, the company has been massively profitable with a minority share. Nintendo therefore must ensure its products are good enough—’magical’, to use Apple’s rather naff terminology—and not merely OK.

One way of doing this is in creating unique experiences, argues Iwata:

I think that if we are able to provide experiences on handheld devices that consumers cannot get on another device, then we will continue creating software and hardware going forward…

Strong first-party games married with intuitive and preferably innovative control mechanisms are the way to do this. But Nintendo has of late too often wavered and retreated to its default position of “release the same hardware in different colours and at different sizes”, which leads to Iwata’s flip-side of the coin:

… and if it comes to a point when we’re not able to do that, I think, yeah, you will see portable handheld gaming devices go the way of the Dodo

Curiously, though, Iwata also isn’t blind to its rivals, nor seemingly scared by them, as the Kotaku piece notes:

The entirety of what you might need to know about how Satoru Iwata feels about the supposed threat of Apple and iOS gaming is that, during our interview last week, Iwata read 3DS sales figures to me off of a MacBook Air, which was plugged into a white iPhone, presumably his. When a gaming reporter goes to a showcase for, say, a Wii game or an Xbox game, Nintendo and Microsoft show their games on non-Sony TVs. They don’t let you see hardware from supposed rivals. But there was Iwata, sitting around the corner of a table from me, laptop flipped open, Apple icon presented toward me.

This to my mind shows a confidence in Nintendo’s products, and also an admission that other companies exist, and that their products are also worth using. Additionally, Totilo also got an interesting response from Iwata about the thorny issue of convergence:

[In] the day of the GBA our challenge was to provide experiences you could not have on a cellphone at that time. In the same way, we have to look at the Nintendo 3DS and other platforms in our future as being able to do the same thing in terms of what smartphones can provide as well.

However, Totilo makes a statement that’s almost a counterpoint and that rings very true:

[The interview] was eye-opening, because it did not conform with the critique from some quarters that Nintendo’s head is in the sand and that it does not appreciate the threat of cheap, downloadable iOS and Android games. But it was also short on specifics of how Nintendo would set itself apart in a world that seems more gaga over the next iPhone than over, say, the 3DS’ glass-free 3D.

This appears to be the challenge for Nintendo now: not in realising the market has changed, but responding to that. I’m going to be very interested to see what’s next from the company. Another DS with a gimmick is clearly not going to be enough. I wouldn’t be shocked to see the Game Boy brand back, but as a much stronger device in terms of being multifunctional, but also with innovations for gaming that no-one else had thought of. If not and we just get the 3DSMax-o-tron II, I think Nintendo could find itself in a much worse situation.

Still, even if the worst comes to the worst and Nintendo did have to do a Sega, imagine if its games ended up officially on iOS: Angry Birds would be ousted from the top of the charts by Mario and chums, probably forever. As a worse-case scenario, that’s not too bad a prospect, and you could bet even a gaming-ambivalent Apple would sit up and take notice if it got an email from Iwata mentioning that Nintendo’s games were soon coming to the iPhone and iPad.

10 comments on “Nintendo versus Apple for the future of handheld gaming”

Thanks for write up. Wise stuff. Interesting that the thinking here is quite black and white though? Could they not do software on other platforms and hardware with special extra cool software? Or take a break from HW? Perhaps momentum is the issue, and de-skilling.

My comments come from the perspective of a part-time single-man game developer who focuses on (and loves) the iOS family.

Some good points, but some of them read like you haven’t used a 3DS for any length of time. The included apps provide more than enough of the social ingredient that powers today’s platforms while still being uniquely Nintendo. There is nothing like Swapnote or the brilliant StreetPass Quest on iOS, for example. Really, the StreetPass engagement is much higher than the closest thing Apple provides, which I guess would be GameCenter. (On a tangent, why has there been nothing comparable to the 3DS’ AR Games on mobile? Yes, the “real” 3D adds another dimension (hah!) to it, but even without that I’ve never found an AR app on iOS with a tenth of the content of Nintendo’s pack-in)

It is wise to remember that Nintendo can not (and should not) ignore their core audience – children, and parents/guardians of children. When it comes to the social, messaging, and web apps, unrestricted access to the internet is simply one more thing that will be rightly blocked by parents of younger children, so I feel an over focus on that area would be wasted.

I’m in full agreement that Nintendo needs to catch up in terms of their downloadable platform. It actually beats Apple in a couple of aspects (like videos for all downloadable titles, come on Apple!) and I seriously do not want them to start a race-to-the-bottom mentality, but a more open platform would attract a lot of iOS indies that have grown disenchanted with putting so much effort into a game that has basically one shot at success with a hundred other titles competing for attention on release.

They also need to drop their overly-restrictive DRM. I’m much happier spending money on iOS games when I know they can be used by everyone in my family on multiple devices, whereas I have to go through a mental checklist before buying something on the eStore to decide which device I should buy it for.

@Simon: I’m not talking about Game Center, but the use of devices in a wider context. By social, I’m thinking Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, and reacting rapidly to the networks of the day, not was around while a platform was in development. iOS can do that via a new app. The 3DS is relatively speaking hampered in that regard. From a social gaming perspective, Nintendo’s fine, but when looking at things more broadly it’s lacking.

I’d also argue that Nintendo’s comments on depth of gameplay suggest a company starting to embrace the niche as it loses a chunk of the kids to iOS. (I know few of my friends’ children use the DS or 3DS these days—they’re obsessed with iPads and iPods.) But even if that was a concern, there are techniques to lock such things down. I agree there shouldn’t be an over-focus on those things, but to under-focus would be suicide in the face of the competition.

I hadn’t considered the DRM issue. That’s a pretty good point that I wish I’d brought up myself. Anyway, thanks for the interesting comments.

“[In] the day of the GBA our challenge was to provide experiences you could not have on a cellphone at that time. In the same way, we have to look at the Nintendo 3DS and other platforms in our future as being able to do the same thing in terms of what smartphones can provide as well.”

This of course is a bit nonsense, if we’re talking gba development, we’re talking Snake on nokia 3330.. if we’re talking 2003 (ds was launched in 04) still cell phones had no control options which were capable of doing more than pacman (it went wrong when you had to press to buttons at the same time remember; fifa05, i’m talking to you)…

I have an iTouch and iPad, also a 3DS (now XL). I love them all for what they do. I agree with much of this article but also the comments from Simon.

For me, where Nintendo are currently failing and what may ultimately hurt them long term if it does change are:-

1) DRM – sure not many people like how far this has gone.

2) Nintendo e’Shop – Pricing is just wrong (might have worked ten years ago, but the worlds changed) and not enough games.

3) The world outside of Nintendo – Streetpass, Quests, Puzzle pieces, spotpass are all great. What’s not great is access to the Internet, the browser is unusable still, no facebook or twitter or other non-Nintendo social features.

There is still much that Nintendo are doing right, I’m still excited by the big games and what’s to come in the future. I may also be one of the few that actually likes the 3D mode too. Hope that Nintendo learns to evolve before it repeats history and learns what it’s consumers want too late in the day.

1. They move from being in control of the hardware, being 18 months ahead of the 3rd parties on their own machine, having the full SDK to having the same as everyone else.
2. The lose all the 3rd party money.
3. They have to give Apple 30% of everything – they’ll hate that.
4. They have to pay for all the marketing .
5. Their margins have gone out the window – they used to sell Pokemon in the UK for £35, now it’s a tenner and Apple get 30% of that straight off and never mind the tax man.
7. They make money off the hardware, the only hardware manufacturer to do so from the day of release, so goodbye to all that.
8. They genuinely believe theirs is the one true way, they they and only they really do gaming. to do this they need to control everything, they throw nothing away and hone their games over years before realising them on their platform. I mean, look at the first wave of 1st party DS games, so many clearly N64DD games that made use of the storage, they obviously originaly made use of the mouse and the touch screen enabled that analogue control in a handheld, they used the speech unit otherwise seen in hey you pikachu, the list goes on – they were able to do this because they were ble to produce the hardware from top to bottom.

Maybe they could run an IOS studio in parallel but they’ll either have to charge 30 quid a game on IOs or canablise their own sales. Maybe they could produce some piss poor emulation packs, who knows..

7 odd years ago, pre-wii the talk was the same and they came back and did what the heck they wanted do, in total defiance of what was going on and the way the market said they should. They were right (if lucky) then, I have no dobut they should just do their own thing as their fanbase is as rabid as Apples and doesn’t give a toss what anyone else thinks.